Dream Come True!

Back in 2009 I pleaded for Zondervan to create a TNIV-Reader’s GNT diglot. Last year I brought up the idea again in light of the new NIV2011. Well I just found out that my dream has come true! I can’t wait to get my hands on one of these!

Esteban: I’ve already secured a review copy when it’s released in the fall. Of course I was heartbroken to learn that I’d have to wait so long to lay eyes on this gem but I suppose I can wait. And I can’t believe that you’ve yet to procure a NA27-RSV diglot! I would offer you mine if not for my deep and personal love for it.

Oxford did publish an octapla a few years back, called the Precise Parallel New Testament, which contained the NA27, NIV (1984), KJV, Rheims (Challoner), NASB (1971), NRSV, NAB, and (unfortunately) the Amplified Bible. So, parallel Greek-English NIVs are not anything new.

While I am very glad that Zondervan has published the NIV’s Greek basis (and not merely reprinting the NA27), I think that this book is a bit of an orphan: Zondervan publishes (an excellent) Reader’s Greek New Testament which has helps for a student with a year of Greek or so, and of course it publishes its interlinear edition for students with only a little bit of Greek. I have to wonder who the audience for this edition is:

* advanced students would be better advised to work directly the Nestle-Aland edition (and use its apparatus)

* less serious students would be better advised to work with the RSV-NA27 diglot (and use its apparatus)

* beginning students would be better advised to work with the Reader’s Greek New Testament (which has definitions on each page of less common Greek words)

* dabblers in Greek probably would be satisfied with an interlinear edition

While I am glad this book is appearing, I have to say that ultimately I think it is a bit of a novelty.

Theophrastus: That octapla sounds dreadful! The audience is easily identified as folks like me and you who love Bibles, especially diglots. I can’t see why the “less serious student” should prefer the RSV-NA27 diglot to this one, or why they shouldn’t make use of both. The more the merrier I always say. I think it’s fantastic to have the critical text that the NIV is translated from side-by-side with it. And I can’t imagine that anyone, even “dabblers,” will be satisfied with an interlinear.